FAQs are a confession.
They’re the digital equivalent of muttering, “Oh, right,
we forgot to explain that properly the first time around.” Because if the
content on a site were actually structured to map to the journey
of a real, live human being, the so-called Frequently Asked Questions
wouldn’t need to exist.
And let’s be honest: they’re rarely questions. They’re
rarely asked. And yet… here I am. Clicking. Scanning. Loving them.
Why? Because typically they’re the only island of plain, orderly text
in an ocean of motion graphics and cinematic homepage drone shots. Everything
else is screaming at me in high-res technicolor. The FAQ section? It’s dull.
It’s steady. It’s text. Ahhh.
That boredom is soothing. Logical. Navigable. The sort of
thing I can control + F my way through without feeling like I’ve been
dropped into a neon carnival.
In a perfect world, those glittering top-level pages would
actually serve user needs. But until every organization out there starts
designing like Wikipedia or IKEA instructions—clear, no-nonsense, and built for
humans—I’ll happily cling to the dry little lifeboat called FAQ.
For me it’s not just preference. It’s a
kind of micro-accessibility. I get overstimulated by autoplay videos, by
spinning icons, by the relentless parade of design cleverness. I need a quiet
corner. Text. Black words on a white page.
FAQs are to noisy websites what transcripts are to podcasts: a quiet, searchable oasis of sanity.
So maybe what I’m really saying is this: every website
should have a “No Noise” button. Like airplane mode, but for the web. Kill the
animations. Cut the background video. Turn down the volume. Just let me read.
